Censorship and Sensationalism: “el neotremendismo autoritario”

Abstract

Despite having been removed from legislative vocabulary as of 1949, film censorship in Mexico is still attempted, and often successful. In tracing out a history of censorship practices in Mexico, the complexity of its systems of power becomes evident. Throughout the century, conservative religious groups have dictated codes of moral decency, but at specific moments religion itself has been banned from cinematic representation. Historically, depictions anything less than eulogistic of the president, the army, or the Virgin of Guadalupe were prohibited (Ugalde 2003); but as Mexico moves toward projecting globally the profile of a progressive democratic nation, it can no longer use policy to openly squelch political dissidence. Instead, it presents the RTC’s ratings system—modeled after the US film ratings system—as an impartial method of ranking a film’s suitability for public viewing. Although the RTC continues to dictate the defining parameters of explicit violence and pornography, since the 1970s these themes have posed much less of a concern for censors than negative representations of the nation, the upper classes, or the government itself, particularly with regard to corruption and repressive actions against citizens. In twenty-first-century Mexico, different forms of censorship still in practice and constituting both formal and informal policies are carried out by authoritative bodies in definitive, coercive, or passive methods; by filmmakers themselves in the case of self-censorship; or by distributors and exhibitors when commercial concerns are at play.